Pulgasari

I've got questionable taste in films but fortunately for everyone the world is safe from me ever making one. You can all sleep a bit easier at night knowing that I have no desire to inflict a film on you.

The same can't be said of Kim Jong-il. Yes, that Kim Jong-il, dictator of North Korea, who also happens to be the country's film dictator. Did I say dictator? I meant Happy Fun Time Coordinator. Not only does he love crappy movies more than I do, he's willing to go to incredible lengths to make them, including kidnapping a director and his wife to make a Godzilla ripoff.

It's certain that a "making of" Pulgasari would be more interesting than the film itself. Unless Kim Jong-il was involved in the making of too. He literally had director Sang-ok Shin and his wife kidnapped and forced them to work on films in North Korea for years. Shin Sang-ok and his wife eventually escaped and sought asylum in the United States in 1986, shortly before Pulgasari was finished.

Shin died in 2006, and I'm not certain if Pulgasari is so bad because of lack of resources or because he hated Kim Jong-il and this film was part of his revenge. Do you want to see a communist propaganda film with a rubber-suited metal-eating monster that stomps on stuff? Of course you do! And you can feel good about it, this film has historical value! Sort of.

The film is about a group of peasants that rebel against a dictator who has been taking all of their farming implements to melt down to make weapons. A dying blacksmith creates a small monster named Pulgasari out of a ball of rice. Pulgasari has an insatiable hunger for iron, and grows larger as the peasants feed it. It soon joins them on their quest for freedom and revenge. I couldn't help but laugh that Kim Jong-il funded a movie about a rubber monster helping peasants overthrow a dictator.

The movie is pretty bland for the first two-thirds, and suffers from crappy acting, fight scenes, and direction. It gets better towards the end when most of the actors have died and Pulgasari has grown gigantic and staggers around smashing model buildings and fortresses to flinders, and even squishes a few people. It never comes close to being a good movie, but it's not the worst giant monster movie I've ever seen.

Pulgasari may serve best as evidence that despotic governments should stay out of the entertainment business, although I admit a certain morbid curiosity about Kim's latest masterpiece, The Respected Comrade Supreme Commander Is Our Destiny (2008). I bet it doesn't have any giant iron-eating rubber monster-suited guys, but I could be wrong.